Monday, February 7, 2011

To the left is my first customer quilt quilted on my Handi Quilter. I learned some things about the machine while quilting it.

A woman from my church asked me to quilt this top her MIL had started. I wondered if she wanted me to just do it for free. I told her (and it was true at the time) that I was not quilting for anyone, but I would get her a quote from a friend that quilted for a business. After getting her quote (which totaled nearly $200 for quilting, batting, backing, and binding), I got the Handi Quilter machine. I worked up my own quote at one cent per square inch (the quilt is 80" x 88") and included batting, backing, and applying bias binding (which turned out really nicely...I used a red and white check and cut it on the diagonal). I didn't think she would want to invest that much money in it, but she told me to proceed.

Check out some of these fabrics. I think of these as prints only Bonnie could love! Bonnie Hunter loves to see vintage prints and wonkiness and fungly fabrics (so ugly that they are fun).

This quilt was a challenge in several ways. The edges were not straight. It did not lie flat. Seams were not sewn well, so one side of the fabric was not even in the seam leaving holes. I didn't think I could send this to someone else to quilt because they wouldn't take the time to repair everything before quilting it. A lot of the blocks were coming apart on the edges of the quilt top from handling no doubt. It was a doozy. Made me appreciate a well-constructed, flat, intact quilt top.

And whew-whee....these prints. If only quilt tops could talk! I could find out where these prints originated. Were they a skirt? Curtains? Jumper? Bedding?

To the left is Susanna's quilt top before borders (she hasn't added those yet. She did a fantastic job of arranging the colors. There are many fabrics in this, and some stand out more than others, but see how pleasing this is to the eye?

To the right is a close-up of the center of the top. She trimmed all the blocks to a uniform size before sewing them to each other. That took about 90 minutes, but see how well it all went together! Nice, flat quilt top.

I added a couple more blocks to my Hearts and Gizzards top. I like the way it's turning out. I am not big into "naming" my quilts, but I did name this one. Hearts & Gizzards just doesn't do anything for me. I still wonder how it came to be called that?

See where the 8 half hearts join into what looks like 4 hearts where the 4 blocks intersect? That reminds me of myself. I have 8 children, and it seems like my heart is in 8 different places at once. So I'm going to call the quilt, "This Mother's Heart". Obviously, this one is going to live right here at my house!